November

Missionary Aubrey

Aubrey has had a great experience over the past months to be involved in missionary lessons with an investigator who is 18 years old. They found they have many thing in common, including theater, and she has really enjoyed the chance to be involved in the teaching and mentoring process. The missionaries here are currently able to use their regular facebook accounts to contact investigators, so the two missionaries and Aubrey an the investigator facebook messaged almost daily to check in on things and talk about their scripture reading. It was a cool use of technology!

In these pictures, Aubrey and her friend had played the role of the "sister missionaries" (complete with post-it name tags) and had taught the Elders a discussion. And then they did a taste test of two batches of chocolate chip cookies we had made after church (one was the recipe I have used forever which I love and the other a new recipe which Aubrey likes better.)

Flight

Aubrey participated in the VSAA play mid-December. It was an original production which involved multiple art forms based on Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex on Flight. It was very unique and fun! Aubrey was involved in creating some of the scenes and had multiple roles including one of the narrators.

Every night during the 2 week tech week, parents brought in dinner for the participants. On the first day of the show, Emma's mom coordinated a fancy Italian meal complete with cannoli, fancy tablecloths, fancy folded napkins, and sparkling cider!  Aubrey enjoyed doing the play with two of her good friends, Emma and Maria.

Afterward we took pictures. Seth and Becky saw the play one night and the rest of the family saw it another night (including Brandon, but not Angela, who attended her grandpa's funeral before flying to our house for Thanksgiving).

It's tradition that Joseph always gives Aubrey flowers after her show.

Thanksgiving week

 It was so much fun to have everyone home. We did our best to party every day and enjoy talking and being together. Every morning we gathered for scriptures while we had breakfast. It was so fun to have the older kids join in the discussions!

 One day we did an escape room (except for Angela, who had to take a final online during that time). And we rocked it and got out of the room under the hour time limit!
We started a new tradition and celebrated "Pie Day" on the day before Thanksgiving. We loved it - this spread out some of the work of preparing the meal and allowed us to really enjoy the pies before we indulged in a decadent meal the next day. This year we bought a pumpkin pie and made an apple pie and a chocolate pecan pie.

We divvied up the assignments for food prep for Thanksgiving. Angela made the pie and the mashed potatoes (two types, including one which was spicy and deliciously gourmet, which really pleased my savory-seeking senses). Aubrey made the rolls with me. Bailey and I made the apple crumb pie (we decided AGAIN that pie crust making is a lot of trouble without stellar results). Brandon made the stuffing. I made the cranberry relish, sweet potatoes, salad, etc. Dan peeled the potatoes and helped with random things on Thanksgiving, including cooking the turkey breast. By the way, we discovered something amazing. Our family tends to be more into ham than turkey, so it's a lot of work to make a big turkey, so this year we got a turkey breast from Costco and followed a recipe for cooking it in a crockpot. And everyone agreed that it was the most flavorful, tender turkey ever! And so, so easy. And, we bought a half ham and that was plenty. 

 Joseph was not very happy about the rolls being placed near him.

 We took pictures after dinner with my phone camera, which had gotten really cloudy and indistinct. Thank goodness I got a new phone with a better camera for Christmas! 

Family Day in the Temple

We had the most amazing experience the day after Thanksgiving. Bailey went through the temple to take out her endowments for the first time. While Brandon, Angela, Brandon, and I were with her, Aubrey and Joseph did family names downstairs in the baptistry. Afterward we met up and then went out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. It was a wonderful day celebrating an amazing girl who does everything possible to align her life with the Lord's will.

Then, we drove home and decorated the Christmas tree and officially kicked off Christmas. Dan and I had envisioned us really doing the entire Christmas Eve thing that night, since Brandon and Angela wouldn't  be here with us for Christmas (reading a story by the tree, watching a Christmas movie, having a sleepover in the bonus room), but no one was too enthused about diving headlong into Christmas Eve already, so we compromised by watching "It's a Wonderful Life" together. In the morning, Santa had visited and brought each kid some candy, a family Hulu membership, and some cash with which to go clothes shopping. Lucky kids . . . Santa visited them twice this year! 

Joseph opening the letter and money in his stocking the next morning.

A beautiful welcome to the season

Saturday we dropped off all our adult kids at the airport to return to their homes in Utah and California. We were so sad to see them go! Aubrey was already in downtown Portland,  helping to video the wonderful Portland Choir and Orchestra Christmas concert that our friend Brad Goodwin produces each year in the Newmark Theater.  After the matinee show we drove through the pouring rain to join her for lunch at Pieology Pizza, and then Joseph helped tech the evening show and Dan and I bought tickets to watch the inspiring concert.

College App Completed!

Right around this time Aubrey completed the first of her college applications, to BYU Provo! Finishing all the requirements for the apps has been arduous, but Aubrey would secretly tell you that she has kind of enjoyed the process! In the next few month she finished applications to Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and University of Chicago. 

And that closed out most of November. We were exhausted but happy! 

Halloween Partying

October was so busy (particularly for Aubrey, who had play practice 6 days a week) that it was hard to find a time when everyone was available for our traditional Halloween dinner. However, both kids said that this was a tradition which was important to them, so we fit it into the first sunny Saturday in October, the 28th, right after we got back from the pumpkin patch.

The kids choosing their meal options. 

What you can't see: spooky music in the background (well, spooky a la Dan's Halloween playlist, which is spooky in a Disney sort of way), pumpkin spice Scentsy in the air, and Dan delivering food with his best scary zombie impersonation. Good times!

 Our day at the pumpkin patch. Unfortunately, all of Vancouver was at Bi-Zi farms by the time we could get there after Aubrey's rehearsal. And, the ground was VERY muddy after a month long rainstorm. But, the weather was awesome. I would have to say, though, that the magical days of young kids and holiday traditions are waning. Mostly the kids went along with the pumpkin patch because it's a nostalgic thing and I wanted to do it. They really weren't that much into it. Why do kids have to grow up?

Pumpkin launching

 Posing by the pigs because I said they had to

 Getting lost (and mired in mud) in the corn maze. Thank goodness the kids followed the map expertly and led us out!

 Getting our pumpkins in the pumpkin fields. It was a beautiful vista, but Joseph wasna't able to enjoy it suddenly had an intestinal issue and spent a long time in the porta potty. Afterward he quickly found his pumpkin, posed for a picture, and then we climbed back on the wagon to return to the main part of the farm.

 Joseph attended a trunk-or-treat church party with friends in 3rd Ward. Our ward also had a chili cookoff/trunk-or-treat (in the pouring rain), but apparently I didn't take any pictures.

We paused between October activities to rake the leaves which covered our lawn, street, and neighborhood. Our trees in the front are getting so big!

 We didn't get a chance to carve a pumpkin until Halloween after school! Joseph carved outside in the beautiful late October sunny afternoon. He and his friend Ian designed a pumpkin which was vomiting its guts. Ha ha - not sure why I neglected to get a picture of the final product!

This is the only shot I got of Aubrey on Halloween. She wore her owl onesie to school. Her school is the only one in the district which encourages (and allows) costumes on Halloween! 

 Halloween night we hosted Joseph's 3 friends (Ian, Gabe, and Matt) for dinner and then trick-or-treating and the all-important candy trading. Too bad it was a school night so they couldn't hang out very late!

 Some friends from school came over to trick-or-treat through our neighborhood with the boys. The big news this year . . . . they all went through the haunted house our neighbors run across the street in our cul-de-sac!

Meanwhile in Utah, Bailey arranged a filming of a music video for the book/movie Holes. She had bought the awesome orange jumpsuits online! Their acting and then the video editing of the finished product was impressive!

They wore their Holes outfits at school on Halloween as well.

And that was the end of October. It was a good one.